2012 Q2 – Spring – Page 2

Nyarko-san: Another Crawling Chaos (Haiyore! Nyaruko-san)

(12ish episodes ?)

What’s it about ?

Lovecraft monsters as cute girls ! Except not really.

Characters

Mahiro, our token male protagonist. Mostly there to keep complaining that nothing makes sense. For some reason, he’s targeted by tons of creepy monsters, thus why he’s being protected by…

Nyarlathotep, aka Nyarlko. Except she’s not really a sanity-destroying abomination (unless you want to give this series way too much credit), but an alien agent sent by the Galactic Defense Organization to protect Mahiro. Oh, and the access to Earth entertainment is a nice side-benefit, too. Obviously she’s supposed to be annoying, but they kinda overshoot the mark.

We see a bit of Mahiro’s supporting cast, including a rare non-perverted best friend (who’s just bland), and the inquisitive journalist-type who’s set up to be a regular annoyance. The OP/ED also promises two more of Nyarlko’s kind, but they’ve yet to really show up.

Production Values

Not very good. And no, re-using the same stock monster three times does not become more tolerable if it’s pointed out.

Overall Impression

You know what ? I actually enjoyed somewhat the Flash-made shorts from a little while ago. Sure, they were crudely drawn and some of them were boring, but they did have a good final punchline, and clearly suggested that those were eldritch abominations mindfucking Mahiro (and the audience) in a very convoluted way for the lulz. That was a decent way to make the premise work.

Unfortunately, this new series pretty much throws all of that away. I mean, you can still interpret it that way if you’re so inclined, but that’s probably wishful thinking. Instead, Nyarlko is transformed into a generic superhero who’s bloody annoying in the downtime scenes (I can only stand Kana Asumi in small doses), which is just a waste.

So we’re left with a generic superhero show with an insufferable heroine and tons of 4th-wall-breaking jokes that aren’t funny. I’ll pass.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 8.

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia (Tasogare Otome x Amnesia)

(12 episodes)

What’s it about ?

A high school detective club who investigate ghost stories. And the club’s president is a ghost.

Characters

Okonogi, our point of view character for the first half of this episode. She seems to be the secretary of the club. She’s really, really stupid, and completely fails to pick up the numerous clues that there’s a ghost just next to her. Half of her interior monologue is devoted to how much she likes…

Teiichi, the vice-president of the club. He’s apparently got a sixth sense for paranormal events (although reading Okonogi’s thoughts is just a string of coincidences and misunderstandings). At the very least, he’s the only person who can see AND touch…

Yuuko, the club president, and a famous ghost haunting the school. It’s just that Okonogi is too dumb to make the connection. Since she’s invisible to most, she spends a lot of her time trolling people and flirting with Teiichi. She’s got some memory problems, hence the series’ title.

Kirie, the fourth member of the club. Somehow she can see Yuuko (the reason why isn’t explained in this episode, but becomes obvious once I did three seconds of research), and thus she spends most of her screentime being annoyed by her antics.

The gimmick in this episode is that you see the exact same sequence of events twice (down to the specific camera angles), first without and then with Yuuko and her dialogue. It’s not as successful as it could be, as most of it was perfectly obvious the first time around ; but there’s enough new material (especially Yuuko’s body language) for it not to feel like a waste of time.

Production Values

Impressive. The animation team goes out of its way to make even a simple corridor look cool, and the episode’s gimmick wouldn’t work without a great attention to detail and body language. There’s also some good use of colour for atmospheric effect. That said, there are some points later on where Okonogi’s hysterics devolve into SD shorthand.

Overall Impression

Hum. This is a decent setup episode ; the joke isn’t subtle, but it works. And of course, it looks great.

The problem is that, while we’ve now got a good handle on the characters, there’s no indication about where the show itself is going. Is the gang going to have random slice-of-life adventures ? Or is there a wider plot coming ? This episode doesn’t tell us, and so it’s hard to say yet whether the series can sustain 11 more episodes. (I really hope the gimmick was a one-shot, because otherwise it’s going to be bloody annoying.)

Well, at least I’m intrigued enough to check a couple more episodes out.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 7.

Mysterious Girlfriend X (Nazo no Kanojo X)

(13 episodes)

What’s it about ?

Romantic comedy (?) where the teenagers are really, really horny.

Characters

Akira, our protagonist. He’s a bit generic, with his most notable character trait being the very weird dreams he has. But then, it’s hard to stand out next to…

Mikoto, the mysterious new transfer student. I’ll grant her that : she’s weird in a way I’ve never seen before. She utterly refuses to socialize with the rest of the class and spends the breaks asleep at her desk. At one point she randomly erupts into wild laughter, to everyone else’s consternation. The only panty shot in the whole episode is to show she keeps a pair of scissors tugged in with the string.

The plot here is that Akira becomes addicted to her drool. Not because there’s anything special in it, ahah, that’d just be nonsense (OR IS IT ?), he’s just a horny teenager who’s fallen in love with her. Not that she minds, as a voice told her he would be the one she’s have her first sex with. (THAT’s why she suddenly erupted in laughter the other day.)

Production Values

Quite good. The dream sequences are especially nice to look at. The character designs are a bit retro, but Mikoto’s eye-obscuring bangs are a good design choice.

Special mention to the soundtrack, which together with the direction manages to permeate nearly every scene with a foreboding and creepily offbeat atmosphere. Even (and especially) when nothing bizarre is happening.

Overall Impression

Another well-directed “a boy and his creepy girlfriend” adaptation this season ? Okay, I’m not complaining, especially as this takes a completely different direction from Sankarea. The emphasis here is on how weird Mikoto is, especially as it’s impossible to tell whether she’s really just a normal girl who doesn’t fit in, or whether there’s something more at work here. There’s plenty to be paranoid about here… and Akira’s overactive imagination doesn’t help.

I have no clue whatsoever where this is going, but I’m hooked.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 7.

The Basketball Which Kuroko Plays (Kuroko no Basuke)

What’s it about ?

Classic shounen sports series.

Characters

Taiga Kagami, an abrasive man-mountain who’s just entering this brand-new high school the series is set in. Of course he joins the basketball club : he’s very good and he knows it. He’s not playing for fun, but because he thinks the tournament’s level is way too low and he must contribute to raising it (his recent stay in the US might explain his attitude somewhat).

Tetsuya Kuroko, another first year with no presence whatsoever. (It’s a running gag that people never notice he’s there.) He comes from a middle school which had a basketball team called “the Generation of Miracles” who crushed everyone else on the circuit. Kuroko wasn’t part of the top 5 regulars, though ; actually, he’s mostly crap at basketball, utterly incapable of dribbling or shooting right. But there’s ONE thing he’s insanely good at : passing the ball in a way that completely blindsides the opposing team. (Obviously, his natural propension at being invisible also helps.)

Riko Aida, the only female character in sight. Well, at least she’s not the manager (if you’re not aware, it’s a traditional position for token females in anime school-set sports series who doesn’t manage anything but is basically a glorified gofer), but the hard-ass coach who’s going to press the first-year noobs into shape.

And then there’s the other members of the club, but they don’t really leave much of an impression yet.

Production Values

Not very high, but the storytelling is sound. The soundtrack might be trying a bit too hard to make everything dramatic and suspenseful, but it mostly works.

Overall Impression

Hey, this is better than I expected. Sport series obey to a strict formula and there’s nothing here that really strays from it, but there’s enough playfulness around the usual tropes to make it feel fresh. Kuroko’s deadpan attitude is a lot of fun, and him and Kagami make for a fun odd couple.

I wasn’t really expecting to keep following this, but the first episode intrigued me.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 7.

Upotte

(10 episodes)

What’s it about ?

The unholy combination of gunporn and lolicon.

Characters

FNC, aka Funko. She’s an assault rifle that looks and acts like a middle-schooler. (Well, the completely reality-detached fetishization of middle-schoolers you find in lolicon, anyway.) I have a hard time even making sense of this : there’s a permanent association between her body-parts elements of the rifle (guess which part’s the trigger ?), but then she’s shown holding her namesake when firing.

And there’s a whole school of them ! Which includes most of the teachers. But only the girls, I have no clue what the boys are even doing there. Anyway, most of their characterization revolves around stereotypes about which country manufactures their namesake gun (and/or characteristics of the guns), in a way that makes Axis Powers Hetalia look sensitive and subtle. I gave up on keeping track of them when they gave the American a Kansai accent for no good reason… and pointed it out in dialogue quickly. (This series loves breaking the fourth wall. It doesn’t make it funny or endearing, it’s just bloody annoying.)

There’s also a new transfer teacher, and he’s as confused by the whole thing as us. The series never gets around to giving him any name beyond “Sensei”, which seems to be meant as a running gag. Funko sends him to the hospital on his first day after he blurts out he’s seen her wearing a thong and OH DEAR GODS MAKE IT STOP

Production Values

Dire. I presume keeping Sensei’s face obscured for most of the episode is a stylistic choice, although it’s hard to tell when the direction goes out of its way to have whoever’s talking off-screen or shot from behind to skim on the animation budget.

Thankfully we don’t actually see Funko’s thong. The fanservice level keeps to longing shot of the cameras on middle-schoolers’ legs, and copious amounts of clothed breast-groping.

Overall Impression

I was wondering whether we’d been spared any truly dire series this season. Sure, Shiba Inuko-san, ZETMAN and Sengoku Collection are crap, and I’ve skipped the latest Queen’s Blade season, but those are at least somewhat watchable.

But this is utterly sanity-destroying stuff. I alternated racking my brain in an effort to make sense of the utterly incomprehensible premise… and getting assaulted by the sudden ramping up of the lolicon angle. Whatever you think of the bizarre gun metaphor, there’s no obscuring of the fact that Funko spends half the episode aroused at the thought of Sensei touching her.

Also, it’s a comedy show that isn’t funny in the slightest. And it looks terrible. And nobody’s got any personality. There’s no redeeming value to this whatsoever.

Avoid like the plague. I watched this so you didn’t have to.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 7.

Acchi Kocchi

(12ish episodes)

What’s it about ?

Idiot hair, the anime.

Okay, not really, but it’s hard to find any actual premise here. It’s a gag series set in high school, adapted from a 4-panel manga.

Characters

Tsumiki, our central character. She’s short and very shy. Also, utterly improbable hair. She randomly sprouts cat ears whenever the show wants to make her cuter, which just looks a bit weird.

Io, her kinda boyfriend. He’s a boy of few words, and it’s hard to say at this point whether he’s deadpan or just bland.

Mayoi, their insane troll friend. She likes pranks, and the labcoat she’s always wearing makes her a technical genius, which is a dangerous combination.

Hime, their perverted fangirl friend. The kind who always gets nosebleeds when they do something cute. A bit ditzy and clueless.

Sakaki, the mandatory perverted best friend dude. Well, at least he’s more subdued and has more charisma than the norm.

Ms. Sakuragawa, their clumsy teacher with no authority whatsoever.

Production Values

Pretty scene transitions ! It’s almost a shame that these nifty geometric gimmicks don’t bleed more into the actual sketches, because they give the show most of its identity.

Overall Impression

Your token generic 4-panel gag series. Perfectly inoffensive, and most gags do trigger a smile, but the only distinctive thing about it (besides the scene transitions) is that it’s somewhat gender-balanced and centers on a romance subplot (that probably won’t go anywhere).

Eh, it looks like there’s nothing else on Fridays anyway, so I may well stick with it.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 6.

Polar Bear Cafe (Shirokuma Cafe)

What’s it about ?

Gag series set in a world where animals live like (and coexist with) normal people.

Characters

Panda, our protagonist. Your typical teenage boy who spends his time loafing around (eating bamboo). He gets pestered by his mother into getting a part-time job, so off he goes, with little enthusiasm. No, scratch that, the main problem is that he’s too honest. (“Are you actually going to do any work once you’re hired ?” “Probably not.”)

Mr Polar Bear, owner of the next-door café. He’s looking for a part-time waiter ; believe it or not, Panda is the best of the five applicants he gets. He’s got a running gag where he’ll mishear an order and bring something ridiculous to fit a pun ; it just doesn’t work outside of Japanese, and the CR translator appear to have just given up on making sense of it.

Mr Penguin, a regular patron of the Polar Bear Cafe. He’s mostly there to be the straight ~~man~~ penguin in the jokes.

Production Values

Not very high, but it’s got a distinctive artstyle, with all the animals depicted realistically.

Overall Impression

Wait, this is actually quite funny ! It helps that it’s got an incredibly star-heavy cast (Jun Fukuyama, Takahiro Sakurai, Hiroshi Kamiya…) who can pull off deadpan insanity without breaking a sweat. Okay, I could do without the “mistaken order” running gag (which doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the series anyway), but the general setup is a great joke that is executed very well.

Now, the question is “how long can this sustain itself ?” This is a daytime show, so there’s always the possibility it’ll continue going way past its sell-by date. On the other hand, I doubt this kind of humour has more than a niche appeal, so I wouldn’t expect it to last too long before being cancelled.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 6.

Sankarea

(12ish episodes)

What’s it about ?

Romantic comedy. With zombies.

Characters

Chihiro, our protagonist. Completely obsessed with zombies : he’s got an impressive DVD collection and tons of related toys and props. And yes, he has a zombie-girl fetish. His pet cat just died, so over the last few days he’s been scurrying off to a condemned building and trying experiments from some random book he found somewhere so as to raise it from the dead. Because (1) he was very fond of it, and (2) hey, zombie-cat ! He’s perfectly aware it probably won’t work, but one never knows…

Rea, the title character, a girl who coincidentally screams into a well nearby the same condemned building in order to vent her frustrations. She comes from the very rich Sanka family (they own the local girls’ high school), and finds herself crushed by the weight of expectations. After the two of them meet and become quick friends, she makes it clear she’s willing to run away from her life with him. He turns her down ; he’s only interested in zombie girls. Well, if that’s the only problem…

Rounding up the cast are Chihiro’s family (busy priest father, dead mother, deadpan little sister, friend-zoned cousin), and his few friends at school (including the token perverted best friend, who doesn’t stand out much next to the guy with a zombie-girl fetish). The OP hints we’re also going to see Rea’s family at some point.

Production Values

Wait, did Deen hire someone from SHAFT, or is this director even ANN has never heard of just a Shinbo fanboy ? Okay, this is nowhere near the craziness of the -monogatari series, but it does copiously pick from SHAFT’s usual bag of tricks : long shots, shots from above, close shots on body parts, editing used in a way that punctuates the dialogue, a good use of shading and shot framing to build atmosphere…

Well, whatever, I’m all for techniques that make the most of the medium to improve storytelling becoming more mainstream.

Overall Impression

Hey, this is actually quite good ! I like Chihiro and his sense of humour (Ryohei Kimura’s charisma strikes again), the two leads have chemistry, and the artful direction doesn’t hurt. The setup is intriguing, with a killer cliffhanger (What did Rea actually do ?) that makes you want to come back for more.

Did someone say that out of the four “My Girlfriend is a X” adaptation, one of them should be good ? Well, this seems to be the one.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 6.

Sengoku Collection

What’s it about ?

Gender-swapped Sengoku warlords thrown into the modern world.

Adapted from a cardgame app, because that’s a thing now.

Characters

Nobunaga Oda, the only girl who really shows up this episode. She’s shangaied away from her parallel world because… er, it’s not quite clear… and drops from the sky into current Tokyo. She eventually learns she’s not the only one and she’s gonna have to battle others like her to get back to her world, but most of the episode is spent on the culture shock.

She quickly shacks up with a poor random wage-slave dude, who’s somewhat bemused by this weird girl who won’t take no for an answer.

And that’s basically it for the cast this episode.

Production Values

Surprisingly good for this sort of thing. There’s a care to the animation that’s entirely wasted on such a project. (I guess Brains Base had to pay the bills and couldn’t find anything better to do…)

Overall Impression

Gender-swapped Sengoku warlords ? It’s been done already. Girl from a magical world who falls on some guy’s lap and experiences some “hilarious” culture shock ? Done to death too. This series is proof that bringing the two concepts together creates absolutely nothing of worth.

Of course, this show could have been saved through superior execution. But we don’t get that here : the characters are the same boring archetypes as usual, and there’s no spark whatsoever to this. The animation’s good, but that’s not enough to overcome the tediousness of the whole affair.

Pass along, nothing to see here.

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 6.

Medaka Box

What’s it about ?

A super-ultra-awesome new student council president goes around “helping” people all over campus.

Characters

Medaka, the new student council president. She’s hyper-competent at everything. Since she wants to go around helping everyone, she’s set up a suggestion box. Hence the title.

Zenkichi, our point-of-view character, and Medaka’s childhood friend. He spends the whole episode ranting incoherently about her behaviour while she leads him around. You’ve guessed it, they’re a couple of tsundere in the now classic Kyon/Haruhi mold… except Kyon had charisma and a point.

Shiranui, a bizarre small girl who knows everything about everyone and is just plain weird. She’s the only character who’s actually fun to watch.

Production Values

You might have been interested in this show because GAINAX did it. But the Nadia/Evangelion/FLCL people are long gone. And the TTGL/Panty&Stocking crew just left too. So that leaves us… the director of He Is My Master.

And no budget whatsoever, from the look of it : this looks like crap.

Overall Impression

Oh, dear. This just doesn’t work. The dialogue is clunky (did NisiOisiN really contribute to the original manga ? Was he phoning it in, or is this adaptation just terrible ?), the jokes tired, and the lead characters annoying.

I’m giving it a second episode on the hope that some new supporting cast might improve matters (or at least make Zenkichi shut up a bit), but I’m not hopeful.

A big problem is that, despite her awesomeness, Medaka somehow manages to be bland. Her “I don’t care about being awesome, I just want to help everybody” philosophy isn’t particularly enthralling either, mostly because the show wants it to be a grand reveal despite being perfectly obvious from the start. (And the flower thing is just silly in its clumsiness. Or maybe it’s just the clunky dialogue bringing the whole scene down.)

But the most problematic part of the show is Zenkichi, the Kyon wannabe. Yes, Medaka is completely unlike Haruhi because she doesn’t abuse him and is perfectly open about why she keeps him around. She’s no tsundere, whatever he claims. THAT’s what makes his attitude so annoying. It feels to me that the only reason he’s so hostile in this first episode is to provide artificial conflict, which is just poor writing all around. He’s been around her since childhood, he shouldn’t need a grand reveal about her outlook in life at this point.

Also, the show spends far too much time on him telling us how awesome she is, instead of, you know, showing us her being awesome (which are the moments that do work).

I’ve heard that the manga gets way better down the line, after a genre change or two. Then, they really should have skipped those terrible first few dozen chapters (or skipped through them, only including the actually relevant parts for the future). Because at this rate, it’s hard to imagine this anime adaptation even getting to the good parts…

via [In which I review] New anime, Spring 2012 – Page 5.